title: Monte Carlo modeling of chiral adsorption on nanostructured chiral surfaces and slit pores.
abstract: Adsorptive separation of chiral molecules is a powerful technique that has long been used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. An important challenge in this field is to design and optimize new adsorbents to provide selective discrimination of enantiomers. In this article, we introduce an off-lattice model of chiral adsorption on nanostructured surfaces and slit pores with the aim of predicting their enantioslective properties. The concept presented here involves finding the optimal chiral pattern of active sites on the pore walls that maximizes the difference between the binding energies of the enantiomers. Our initial effort focuses on chiral molecules that do not have specific interactions with the pore surface. One candidate meeting this requirement is 1,2-dimethylcyclopropane (DMCP), a chiral hydrocarbon whose interaction with a model pore surface was described using the Lennard-Jones potential. To model the adsorption of DMCP, we used the Monte Carlo simulation method. It was demonstrated that the separation of the enantiomers of DMCP is hardly obtainable because of the smoothness of the potential energy surface for molecules physisorbed in the pore. However, the simulated results allowed the identification of key factors that influence the binding of the enantiomers of DMCP to the pore walls with a special distribution of active sites. This information will be useful in future considerations of the adsorption of more complex chiral molecules.
authors.affiliation: Department of Theoretical Chemistry, Maria-Curie Skłodowska University, Pl. M. C. Skłodowskiej 3, 20-031 Lublin, Poland. szabla@vega.umcs.lublin.pl
authors.forename: Paweł
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Szabelski
authors.forename: Tomasz
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Panczyk
authors.forename: Mateusz
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Drach
mesh_terms: D000327:Adsorption; D020134:Catalytic Domain; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004134:Dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine / Q000737:chemistry; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000379:methods*; D013237:Stereoisomerism; D013499:Surface Properties; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D004134:Dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine